here are the two new for 2013 posts at my blog amerf1can.com if you like them there is a whole years worth from 2012 that you can view.


Reading The Tea Leaves
Posted: February 15, 2013 | Author: johnpierrerivera | Filed under: F1 | Modify: Edit this | Leave a comment »

Every once in awhile it occurs to me that a steady diet of my biased, silly, sometimes cruel, every once in a while self-deprecating F1 rants might get tiresome so instead I like to bring the attention of my readers, all 20 of you, to some real blogging.

I go to the BBC website’s F1 section at a minimum of once per day. I’ve recently been obsessing on an article by Gary Anderson titled Number Crunching Gives Early F1 Form, in which he predicts the true potential of each team by starting with their posted test times and then accounting for the vast amount of variables that, purposefully or not, obscures a team’s true performance.

I’m pretty sure I have now gone through this article at least ten times reading every little bit of information and looking for the smallest clues as to who has the advantage either in outright pace or who is the most consistent over a certain number of laps, or which chassis is the kindest on its tires.

Now I know what you must be thinking, the season has yet to start, a normal person before surrendering almost every other Sunday from March to November to a bunch of over-priced cars, driven by some over-paid drivers (well at least some of them ha-ha), managed by over-paid teams, (even in this new era of restraint and cost controls), would be, should be, finishing those last couple of chores around the house that his wife has been asking for going on three months now, or catch up on some much needed reading from the stack of baby books (our twins are 7 months now), or finish the kitchen remodel that I started back in the summer of 2012, and of course you would be right. But am I? Sadly, not. I am so starved for F1 that I am reduced down to scouring any and all things that I can read, look at, or listen to. My wife has one word for this: “Tragic.” I would have to agree. But back to the point.

Mr. Anderson is no joke – he has been technical director for three F1 teams (Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar) not to mention whatever he did to get to F1 in the first place. But it is still quite impressive how he was able to determine where each team stood starting with the times they were putting on the board in Jerez, Spain during the first test of 2013, and calculating for all the variables that exist.

In a nutshell here it is: taking into account the amount of laps the driver completed on a specific run, that being 3-4 laps for a light fuel run, compared to 10-15 laps on a heavier tank, he used the known information of how much fuel an F1 car gobbles up per lap, how much degradation the tires would suffer, and factored in the difference for the harder tire (slower) and the softer tire (faster). He then determined what the best possible time each car/driver combination was capable of; can you say “nutty professor”? As if that was not hard enough, don’t forget that the big teams, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, are usually sandbagging a little bit. We saw Red Bull do this constantly last year in Friday practice and then during Saturday qualifying they would throw down the gauntlet. (Bitches.) So he also accounted for teams that are trying to conceal their true race pace vs. teams that are not. Now of course this is somewhat speculative, but for as long as I have been following F1 these early speculations by the technical pundits like Gary Anderson always seem to bear out pretty closely to the real thing, come race time.

The good news for me and Alonso fans or Ferrari fans, and yes, Felipe Massa fans as well, is that the F138 doesn’t appear to be the slow undriveable piece of crap that Ferrari brought to the party last year. (Of course you recall that despite this fact, in the hands of Fernando Alonso it almost won the Driver’s Championship, that is just how good he is). Instead, according to our BBC Pundit, the Ferrari looks pretty good, in fact really good. In a week’s time we have the second test and Fernando takes over the testing duties from Massa. So fingers crossed that this trend continues. For sure the Ferrari won’t be the fastest at the first race in Melbourne, but if Fernando can qualify in the top 5 (instead of 12th like last year) and within say .03 seconds of the pole sitter (instead of almost 2 seconds), then in race trim he should have a chance at starting the 2013 campaign considerably better than last year. We shall see. 30 days and counting. -jp the not so real, but extremely devoted, pundit-




Time Heals All Wounds (Or So They Say)
Posted: February 2, 2013 | Author: johnpierrerivera | Filed under: F1 | Modify: Edit this | 2 Comments »

Well not really, but whatever. It has been some time since I have put my hands on the keyboard to blog. I think it was in September when things started to go south and no one wants to listen to a cranky blogger. The problem is that this blogger is so invested in his team and driver, not only the highs but also the lows are incredibly intense. Winning feels f–ng great, losing just plan sucks, and it doesn’t get much more intense than starting the season with a slow car, overcoming that with skill and luck to take and hold the lead through most of the season, but still ending up three points down from the same team and driver that beat you the last two years. Ugh.

I have to say this one hurt even more than 2010. In that year Fernando made some serious mistakes, and as he very graciously said after the season was over, our season was not lost in the last race (I’m paraphrasing here). It was generous of him to excuse the strategist that made the wrong decision in calling Fernando into the pits to cover Mark Weber instead of staying out and following the leaders. Fernando got stuck behind Vitelli Petrov and his race and championship ended right there.

In 2012 Alonso was mistake-free, capitalized on every opportunity that was given to him, and produced three wins in a car his teammate Felipe Massa could barely get around the track. Some would call the coming together with Kimi Raikkonen in Japan an error, but I disagree. Kimi was behind and he didn’t leave enough room. A simple coming together. When cars are that close, there is bound to be contact. No big surprise there. What was also not surprising, Alonso drove at the highest level all year long, and once again managed to drive his car far beyond its true mechanical ability.

But you don’t have to take my opinion. Let’s ask the F1 team principals. Oh wait, somebody already did: “A poll of all the team heads carried out by Britain’s Autosport magazine, with each asked to list their top 10 and award points according to grand prix scoring, placed Alonso first with 269 and Vettel second on 198.” It goes on to say “The Spaniard, who won his two titles with Renault in 2005 and 2006, was also voted best driver in 2010 when Vettel took his first championship.” (Here is the link to the full article from YallaF1: http://www.yallaf1.com/2012/12/14/f1-team-...er-of-the-year/ )

One last point of interest on this poll. Of the 12 teams, eight voted for Alonso and four did not. Question to the universe: Red Bull’s manufacturer partner Renault supplies engines to how many teams? Answer from the universe: four. Enough said on that point.

And then there’s the people’s poll taken in the London Daily Telegraph. Alonso was voted driver of the year as well, 61.91% to Sebastian Vettel’s 21.56%. That’s coming from a country that has little love for Alonso stemming from the acrimonious year that he was teammates with beloved English driver Lewis Hamilton. Although Alonso and Lewis have buried the carbon fiber hatchet, from what I can tell in the F1 blogosphere most English fans have not followed Hamilton’s lead on this one.

Now it is 2013. Everyone is rested, batteries recharged. I feel slightly better, well not really, but whatever. It still smarts. But hopefully Ferrari has a better car to start its 2013 campaign. Nowhere to go but up, right? They started last year 1.5 seconds off the pace so surely they can’t do worse than that.

Last year I thought Alonso was having good luck despite having the bad luck of driving a crappy car. That luck lasted all year, right up until it didn’t. Until it ran out. Until Red Bull’s luck changed (along with the rear end of the car, curtisy of Adrian Newey’s brilliance) and they finished in front. So Vettel is champion three times, a record for his age and it’s been a long time since that has been done. You can never take away what that means. Winning in Formula One is a difficult task just in a single race, let alone consistently enough in a season to win top honors. Two years, unbelievably difficult. Three years in a row, better odds that you win the Mega Millions Lottery. Just kidding on that one but you get the idea, it’s f–ing, f–ing hard. So I’ll congratulate Red Bull and Vettel on a deserving win. But make no mistake: Alonso on balance drove better. And that is what I have to say about that. At the time of this post we have 46 days, 6 hours, and 20 seconds to go baby, and it is ON. Look out! –jp